The Unexpected
by dontyouwannadance
Summary: When Jade confides in Tori, she manages to make their "friendship" even more complicated.
1. Chapter 1

In the middle of a raging house party, Tori Vega slammed the first door she could find behind her, grunted angrily, and made a mental note to _never_ bring a boy to a party again.

"Slam it a little louder, why don't you?" A distorted, yet all too familiar voice echoed throughout the dark room from the opposite side.

"Jade?" The other girl sighed loudly, and confirmed that it was her.

"Should've known it was you." Jade hiccupped loudly just as Tori flipped the light switch, revealing the huge bathroom they were in. Across the room, Jade was sitting in an empty bathtub with her feet propped up on the edge. Her eyes were red and she was picking at the ends of her hair, trying not to look at Tori.

"Are you gonna be in here long?" She asked, making sure she sounded as annoyed as possible. Tori just hopped up onto the counter top by the sink and nodded energetically. She could tell her friend had been drinking, which meant she had a chance to play with her a little, and Jade wouldn't do anything about it.

"You know, I heard you were a friendly drunk. Guess that's not true, is it?"

"Not drunk." Jade mumbled, knocking over a glass bottle with her elbow and immediately scrambling to pick it back up before the rest of the liquid inside went down the drain. Tori hadn't noticed what was in the tub with Jade until just then, and she lost all desire to mess with the girl as she grew concerned.

"Oh my God Jade, how long have you been in here? Did you drink all of that?"

"I didn't have _that_ much." Jade replied, pulling her legs into the tub and attempting to stand up.

"Almost half of the bottle is gone." Tori pointed out, as her "friend" stumbled and almost fell out of the tub.

"Don't judge me." Jade spit out, sitting carefully on the edge of the bath tub and placing the bottle of vodka down beside her without tipping it over again. "I spilled some of it…" Clearing her throat, she added "It's not like you don't have problems. What are you so mad about anyway?" Tori just sighed and jumped down off the counter, her mood having turned around once again at the thought of why she was hiding out in the bathroom.

"Well, I just caught my date making out with that freshman that cut in front of me in the lunch line yesterday. You know, the one who bumped into you and would have been punched in the face if I hadn't stopped you from hitting her?"

"Ugh, I hate that girl." Tori smiled a little at Jade's reaction and explained with a shrug,

"He's a jerk though." She felt more like an idiot as the words left her mouth. She should have known he would pull something like that. She was stupid for letting herself fall for his little act.

"I'm sure he is."

"All boys are. " Tori added, with a loud sigh.

"Maybe not _all_," Jade mumbled, responding much differently than Tori had expected her to. "but most." She wrapped her fingers around the bottle and started to lift it, only for Tori to take it from her before it could reach her lips. "Okay, _all_." She amended, sticking out a demanding hand.

"You don't need any more of this." Tori assured her. She turned and set the bottle next to the sink, far enough away that Jade wouldn't try to go after it.

"What's wrong with you?" Tori asked softly. The other girl looked up at her, a deeply offended expression taking over her already reddened face. "You know what I mean."

"Well, I just…I guess…" Her head snapped up and she looked right into Tori's eyes as her frenemy sat down beside her on the bathtub. "This doesn't leave this room, right?" She received a quick nod in response. "Tell anybody and you'll regret it." She nodded again. "Okay, well," Jade tried to cross her legs as she spoke, but lost her balance and fell against Tori, who helped her sit up and then flung one of her own legs over the side of the bath tub, straddling the edge while she waited for the rest of the story.

"Idon'tthinkIloveBeckanymore." Jade said in one breath, staring into her lap for a moment before she saw Tori's reaction. Shock covered the sober one's face, but it soon disappeared and turned into the same look that Tori usually reserved for stray dogs that she saw on the street.

"I just…" Jade tried to explain, but had to turn away from Tori to do it. "Okay, so about an hour after we got here, Beck and I went upstairs to…well, you know…"

"I do, but I really didn't want that mental picture..." Tori muttered, motioning for Jade to go on.

"and it just…I wasn't into it. At all. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Nothing's _wrong_ with you. You're at a party with a hundred other people. It's not exactly romantic."

"No, you don't get it. It was like this the last time too. It's not where we're doing it…it's just that I don't want to anymore…with him."

"Then…with who?" Tori asked, starting to feel a little uncomfortable with the conversation, considering her advice-giving expertise didn't cover situations like this.

"I don't know." Jade grunted and rubbed her eyes, hard. "Look, I know you'd rather not be having this conversation with me right now, but the only other person who really likes me enough to talk about stuff like this and is intelligent enough to be of any use is Beck…"

"Are you thanking me?" Tori asked her as a big smile took over her face. She was pretty sure she'd never gotten anything this close to a thank you from Jade before.

"No. I don't _thank_ people." Jade lied, and if she hadn't drank almost a third of the vodka sitting on the counter, she would have been able to stop herself from smiling back.

"That stuff is disgusting. Cheapskates." She admitted, laughing. "I just took it because it was an excuse to sit in here all night and avoid Beck." Tori awkwardly placed her hand on her companion's shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting way. "I'm pretty sure he knows something's up. He's just too much of a gentleman to talk about it. Or maybe too much of a coward. I don't know. I just don't think it's gonna work. I need to break up with him."

"Don't say that! You guys have been together for so long. You can't make a decision like that in one day."

"Well what if I think about it for a week and don't feel any differently? What about two weeks? What do I do then?"

"Well then…I guess you'd just have to break up with him, if you decided that that's what you really wanted." She responded, growing more and more disappointed by her inability to help.

Jade nodded and they sat in silence for a moment. Tori stared down at her feet and wiggled her toes as she tried to think of either something else to say, or an excuse to leave the bathroom. Jade was completely still, wearing a blank face that gave no hints about how she was feeling. She ran her tongue over her teeth, not saying another word until after she turned to Tori, placed her hands on either side of the girl's head, and completely out of the blue, pulled her into a deep kiss. Several seconds later she let go, pausing for a moment in that position, with Tori's breath on her face and her shocked eyes looking right back. Once what she had done sunk in, she backed away so fast that she fell to the ground, with her eyes growing even wider as she returned to her feet.

"Oh God. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to- I'm so sorry." She snatched the glass bottle from the sink and pulled on the doorknob so hard that it slipped from her sweaty hands. "This didn't happen. I won't tell if you don't." She stated before she disappeared, slamming the door behind her and leaving Tori in the bathroom alone as the one light bulb in the fixture above her head flickered.

…

Half an hour later, Tori finally made her way back to the large living room, where the majority of the party was taking place. She spotted Jade by the opposite wall, vodka in hand, even though by now the bottle was empty and most of the remaining contents were covering her shirt. Pushing several people aside, Tori managed to cross the room just as Jade saw Beck and followed him into the kitchen.

"Hey, I need to talk to you!" Jade spat at him as she ran into the corner of the island counter top like she hadn't even noticed that it was between them.

"Yeah?" Beck responded, confused, just as Tori burst into the otherwise empty room.

"I think-" The rest of her statement was incomprehensible, as Tori spoke – loudly – over her.

"Hey Jade! I just decided I wanna leave too, so I can give you a ride. Beck looks like he's having fun, huh? Wouldn't want to make him have to leave early, would we?" She nodded enthusiastically, staring hard into Jade's eyes until she agreed.

"Right…"

"Okay…" Beck muttered, puzzled by the two girls' behavior.

"Well, see you later then." Tori said to Beck as she snaked an arm around Jade's shoulders and helped her walk out the back door, since she was now too drunk to do that properly on her own.

"Feel better, babe!" Beck called after them. "Goodnight!" Jade looked over her shoulder and smiled a little, but then managed to trip over her own feet, and would have fallen down if Tori hadn't been there, waiting for that exact moment.

"What are you doing?" Jade asked loudly once they were outside.

"Stopping you from breaking up with Beck while you're drunk and confused."

"Oh, okay." Jade said calmly as they searched the yard for Tori's car – or rather, the car she shared with her sister, but had managed to take for the night even though it was supposed to be Trina's weekend.

A couple minutes later, after yanking a giggling Jade around the yard, Tori recognized her red car next to a similar one in blue. She helped her suddenly cheerful friend into the passenger seat and got behind the wheel, carefully maneuvering the car out of the packed temporary parking lot. Neither girl said a word for almost thirty minutes, until Tori accidentally passed the road that she was supposed to turn on.

"I'm so drunk right now" Jade said, laughing at herself, "but even I know you were supposed to turn back there."

"I would hope so. It's your house." Tori responded, her voice full of annoyance.

She pulled into an empty driveway to turn around, and eventually made her way onto the correct road. She focused on the mailboxes as she slowly rolled down the road, looking for the one with WEST painted in white on both sides. She nearly hit a raccoon due to not paying attention, but Tori managed to pull into Jade's driveway without incident. She turned the car off and turned to her passenger, who was staring into her lap and smiling about something.

"Do you have your key?" Jade started patting her hips despite the fact that her pants didn't have pockets, and her smile immediately disappeared.

"…No. Do you?"

"Why would I have a key to _your _house? I've only ever been here once."

"Well I don't know. You don't need to be mean." Jade complained, reaching for the door handle. "I can just go through the dog door." Jade didn't have a dog, but the previous owners of her house had put a pet door in for their obese black lab, and the West family had never gotten around to taking it out. Tori had noticed it when she'd visited Jade's house for the first time with Beck, Cat, and Andre the month before, and Beck had explained it to her.

"Are you sure you can get through it without hurting yourself?" She asked the unusually happy girl climbing out of the passenger seat. The rumor that Jade was a friendly drunk had actually turned out to be true, only now Tori had to wonder how many times Jade had been drunk enough to actually get a rumor like that started.

"Are you calling me fat?"

"No, I'm calling you drunk. You could hardly walk when we left the party."

"Well, I can walk _now_." She responded bluntly, only tripping once as she went around to the back of the house, where the dog door was.

Tori followed her, but waited outside on the deck, rather than trying to squeeze through the door behind her drunken friend. After disappearing into the house, seconds ticked by and Jade didn't come to open the door for Tori, so she ended up crawling through the tiny hole in the wall anyway.

Jade came out of the hall bathroom just as Tori stood up, and looked very surprised to see Tori standing inside her house. She stuck a hand out, trying to use the wall to support herself, only for the wall to be a few inches further away than she'd planned.

"I thought you left."

"I'm not gonna leave without making sure you get to bed without dying first." Tori responded, as if it were obvious.

"Oh." Jade mumbled, before she started for the stairs. Tori followed her up to her bedroom, but waited in the doorway while Jade searched through her dresser, making sure to look away once she started to undress. She wasn't even sure that Jade really remembered what had happened anymore, but she didn't want to be caught looking and make things more awkward.

"I kissed you, didn't I?" Jade suddenly asked, as if she'd read Tori's mind.

"Yeah, Jade, you did."

"Oh. So that wasn't a dream. I'm sorry." She tilted her head to the side as she apologized, like those words in her mouth had caused some kind of kink in her neck.

"It's okay." Tori replied immediately. The rest her sentence didn't come out though. She couldn't find the words to come up with an excuse for what had happened.

"You know…I should thank you. You saved me. If it weren't for you, I'd still be at that party, looking like an idiot and breaking up with Beck in a horrible way."

"You're welcome." Tori smiled through a loud yawn. "Just, you know…before you decide what to do about him, sleep on it. Think about it, okay? Just remember how much you regretted it the last time."

Jade nodded, and then said loudly, "I think I'm gonna pass out." Tori finally entered the room, and helped the inebriated girl get into bed.

"Do you need a bucket or something? You're not going to puke, are you?" She asked as she pulled Jade's blankets up over her.

"I already puked in the bathroom." Jade answered, pushing Tori away. "I think I'm okay."

"Your parents will be home soon, won't they? You'll be okay if I leave?"

"Yeah, yeah. Get out of here." Jade spit out, rolling onto her side. "But next time I'm mean to you, remind me how much I owe you. I probably won't be any nicer, but I might buy you a soda or something."

"I will. See you later, I guess." Tori whispered as she walked out of the room and made her way back downstairs and out to her car – through the front door, this time.

Tori's own house was only about 10 minutes away, but she spent much longer than just the drive home thinking about the many possible outcomes this situation could have, while trying to convince herself that she wasn't waiting on one in particular.

**Funny story - Right after finishing this chapter I locked myself out of the house and had to crawl through the dog door to get back inside.**

**Hope you enjoyed this and the irony though. :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**I love all of you. You're so awesome. I should have joined this fandom sooner. xD I got an amazing reaction on the first chapter - way better than I'd expected – so thank you guys so much. **

**I'm only planning on maybe a couple more chapters (don't groan just yet) because I know that I can finish this if it's short, and if I exceed 5 you're all doomed to never find out what happens. Don't you worry though. These won't be short little boring chapters. I've got you covered. :D I think.**

_I hate me._

_I hate me._

_I hate me._

_I hate me._

_I hate me._

_I hate me._

Tori stood at her kitchen counter with half of a salad in front of her and a fork between her fingers, staring at her phone while she absentmindedly pushed the lettuce around on her plate, and watched the same message pop up in her inbox six times.

_No I don't. I like me. It's you I hate._

"_Bad hangover?" _Tori set down her fork and texted back.

_Why did you let me drink? This is your fault. You should have taken that stupid bottle._

"_Why am I surprised that this makes you so miserable?" _Tori stuck a big forkful of lettuce into her mouth and waited for the response, but it didn't come. Minutes passed and the tasteless salad disappeared. Tori's dirty dishes dropped into the sink with a tiny metallic clink, and she left the kitchen for the comfort of her bedroom, still with no response.

_I honestly hate you so much. _Jade finally texted back as Tori found her laptop, powered it up, and wedged herself comfortably between a few pillows on top of her bed.

"_Are you too hungover for a video chat? We should probably talk." _Tori hit send, surprised that Jade was in a good enough mood to have let this conversation last as long as it already had. They very rarely talked for this long, even in person.

_We have nothing to talk about. _Jade replied quickly, but when Tori signed in, there Jade was, the only person on her friends list who wasn't offline or idle. She clicked on Jade and the window popped up, but it was dark, and she could just barely see the outline of Jade's pale face.

"You're not gonna turn on a light?" She asked, adjusting the computer's brightness and lightening up Jade's face just enough to see how shiny her skin was and how bloodshot her eyes were.

"You wanted to talk, not lip read." Jade responded maliciously, immediately flinching afterwards because of the volume of her own voice. When she saw that Tori was laughing at her on the other end, she scowled and spat – much more quietly this time – "I hope you get hit by a garbage truck." She turned to adjust the pillows behind her, and then added, "and then I hope it scrapes you off the ground and brings you to the dump with the rest of the trash. I hate you that much."

"You didn't hate me last night." Tori said, immediately realizing her mistake, when Jade snapped back to life and shouted through her computer,

"Don't ever bring that up again!"

"Sorry! Sorry." Tori flung her arms up in defeat as Jade settled back into the mountain of pillows behind her and closed her eyes.

"That's not what I meant." Tori tried to explain.

"I don't care what you meant." The other girl responded spitefully.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it though?" The hesitation in her voice proved that Tori knew she shouldn't have asked.

"What part of 'we're not talking about it' don't you understand?" The deeply distressed one fired a question back, the malice disappearing from her voice more and more as her headache grew.

"Okay, okay. We're not talking about it. I just wanted to make sure."

"…How did I even get home last night?" Jade asked quietly, not bothering to open her eyes or even turn her face to the computer when she spoke.

"I gave you a ride, don't you remember?"

"Not at all." She sighed and tilted her head slightly upward. "Well if you have nothing else to say, I'm gonna go drown myself in the bathtub."

"No, Jade, I do have something to say." Tori said, standing up for herself despite the paralyzing fear that was taking over her body with every syllable she spoke.

"What?" The girl on the other side of the computer spit out that word, annoyed.

"You kissed me. You can't just get angry and pretend it didn't happen, because it did. I'm not asking you to do anything about it, but you can't just treat me like dirt to cancel out whatever feelings you had last night that made you do that. It doesn't work that way."

"I was _drunk_!" Jade whispered harshly as she rubbed her temples.

"You can use that as an excuse all you want, but I know that's not why you did it. If you'd done it because you were drunk you wouldn't be so pissed off that I brought it up."

"Are you done?"

"Yes."

"Okay. One." She held up her index finger and arched her right eyebrow. "I don't want to talk about it right now, so can you just let me be hungover in peace?" She then extended her middle finger and held both up to the camera, letting a tiny smile slip this time. "Two: Way to grow a backbone, Vega." Tori just shrugged, surprised by Jade's approval.

"I'd rather try to forget it happened at all. Can we just do that?" She bit down hard on her lip, but quickly let go to add, "Why am I even asking. I don't care what you do, but that's what I'm doing." With that, she reached up and snapped her laptop shut, ending the conversation.

Tori didn't move an inch, and stayed in her bed for another hour, wondering why she wasn't relieved that this was staying between them. She'd been wishing for this whole situation to just disappear ever since it had happened, but now she still didn't feel like anything had been resolved. Several times that hour, Tori told herself that she didn't want to relive it, and pushed any thought concerning that kiss into the back of her mind, but it kept popping up. She kept seeing herself in that bathroom, straddling the edge of the bathtub. She felt her cheeks heat up when she thought of how rough Jade's hands were. She distinctly remembered her last thought before it had happened, in that split second before she'd realized what was happening. _She really needs some hand lotion._

She'd stop her mind at that point every time, her refusal to think about it finally getting through to her brain after straining so hard – and failing – to keep the other thoughts out.

Her mind continued to work much as it had the night before, only in full force, which meant that she got a minimal amount of sleep, if any at all. In the morning, Tori's eyelids felt like ten pound weights, her neck was stiff, and her stomach was churning. She got dressed feeling like she was going to either pass out or throw up, and carried that feeling with her all the way to school.

Her body somehow found its way to her locker and dialed the combination before Tori came to and realized that real life had gone on while she was away in her head. She forced her eyes to stay on the contents of her locker, but soon found them wandering, undoubtedly looking for a certain brunette who she knew probably wasn't here. Tori had never actually gotten drunk – she'd had a beer at a party here or there, even though she thought it was disgusting – but she felt like she'd probably be throwing up for weeks – or dead – if she'd drank as much as Jade had Saturday night.

Surprising everybody who had gone to that party and watched her give mouth to mouth to a bottle of vodka and try to walk through walls and furniture, Jade showed up during lunch. She sat down at the usual table and to everybody else, looked normal. She didn't look at Tori even once, despite the fact that she was sitting directly across from her at the table. She made a big show of looking at everything _but _Tori, and it seemed to have gotten past everyone else, since nobody seemed to notice. They did notice that she wasn't talking – "Sore throat" she explained, faking a raspy voice. "That's what too much vomiting does to you," Beck teased, getting no reaction.

Jade had been studying the remaining quarter of a sandwich on Beck's tray for a good five minutes while everybody who wasn't in on the story went on as if this lunch table hadn't just been voted the capital of Awkward. Beck finally noticed the attraction his girlfriend had to his leftover lunch and offered it to her. Tori watched as she reluctantly took if off his tray and took one bite. She didn't seem to enjoy it, but it was something to put in her mouth so that she didn't have to talk or even act like she cared what everyone else was talking about.

"You in?" Beck's voice echoed in the background as Tori kept her eyes on the little piece of sandwich Jade was squishing between her fingers.

"Yo, Vega."

"Huh? What? I'm sorry. I wasn't listening." Tori apologized, turning her attention over to Beck, Cat, Robbie, and Andre, who were all staring at her, waiting for an answer.

"We're going camping!" Cat exclaimed happily, throwing her arms up.

"My uncle owns a campground about ten minutes outside Calabasas. He said we could stay in one of the cabins for free. It's usually pretty dead this time of year, so there probably wouldn't be anyone else around, and our next unit in Sikowitz's class is horror, so we figured it'd be the perfect place to prepare for that." Beck explained, and then shrugged, "Plus it'll be fun."

"I'm totally in. I haven't been camping in years. When are you thinking of going?"

"This weekend. We could leave Friday after school and come back sometime Sunday."

"Sounds good." Tori said, wanting to give Beck the world's biggest hug for getting her mind off the Jade thing for even a couple minutes.

"Babe? What do you think?" Beck directed his question at Jade, who hadn't seemed to be paying attention.

"_Sure._" She said unenthusiastically, slapping the destroyed sandwich mush in her hand down onto Beck's tray. "I need to go see what I missed." She stood up and left the table without another word. This wasn't too unusual for Jade, so Beck was the only one who looked confused. He gave Tori a look but didn't say anything.

Tuesday went almost the same way. Jade's attitude was slightly improved, but she still didn't look at Tori, and was unusually quiet in class, as well as at lunch. Beck definitely noticed that something was wrong, but when he put his arm around her in an attempt to comfort her, Jade just sat there, stiff as a board, unable to make herself look at her boyfriend.

The rest of the lunch table was abnormally calm as well. Everyone else seemed too afraid to say anything, should they anger Jade. Quiet Jade was scarier than Talkative Jade. If she was talking, she probably wasn't thinking of ways to destroy you.

Just as the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period, everybody got up to dump their trays, except for Tori, who was finishing the orange she'd struggled with peeling for the past several minutes. When she finally took the last bite and stood up to hurry to her next class, she noticed that Beck was standing behind her.

"Hey, is something going on between you and Jade?" He asked. Tori almost choked on her tongue, and squeaked out what sounded like "what?"

"Did you get in a fight or something? She's been acting really weird lately, and you've been pretty quiet too. I just figured maybe she was mad at someone, and I was hoping it was you and not me."

"Oh. Uhhh…She's just having…you know, girl problems." It wasn't a _total_ lie – Jade _was _having _problems_ with a _girl_ - but she'd rather have Beck thinking that Jade was on her period than get herself involved.

"Oh. _Ohhhh…_ Well that would explain a lot." He seemed somewhat relieved, and started to walk away. "Thanks for the heads up." He called over his shoulder.

Tori dumped her tray and hurried to her locker, only to be late to class anyway. The only seat available was, of course, the one behind Jade. She searched the room three times for any other seat, but there wasn't one, so she sat down quietly, flinching when the teacher called her out for being late. Everyone, except for Jade, who kept her attention on the teacher, turned to look at Tori as she apologized and turned bright red.

Two days without a single look.

On Wednesday, Jade was worse. Tori was starting to think that maybe Jade actually _was _on her period, because she definitely wasn't pretending it hadn't happened, like she'd said she would do. She was acknowledging that it had, by making everything so awkward. If she would at least look at Tori, just once, they could pretend that everything was normal and go back to being frenemies. With every hour that passed without Jade recognizing her existence, Tori grew angrier, but she was able to hide it. _She _was capable of acting like nothing had happened.

"OKAY, DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM?" Jade gained the attention of everyone in the Asphalt Café that day at lunch when, seemingly out of nowhere, she stood up and started screaming at Tori.

"Wha-"

"YOU'VE KICKED ME IN THE SHIN THREE TIMES."

"I wasn't doing it on purpose." Tori responded loudly, standing up and defending herself, even though she knew she should just ignore it. "If you'd kept your feet on your side of the table, it wouldn't have happened." Jade took a step back, threw her arms up, and shouted back,

"Oh, so I just have such _big, fat, feet,_ is that it? Is that what you're trying to say?" All of the frustration from the past few days had been quietly building up inside Tori, and now seemed as good a time as any to let it out, so she did, surprising everybody with the words that came out of her mouth.

"No, that's not what I'm trying to say. If that was what I meant, I would have said 'If you'd keep your fatass feet on your side of the fucking table and quit being such a bitch, we wouldn't have a problem!'" Jade's eyes grew three times their usual size, but something about the look she gave Tori suggested that she was more impressed than upset.

"Tori, Jade. You're coming with me." The teacher who had lunch duty that day had unfortunately been standing right behind Tori when she'd said the three magical words, and now the two girls had won themselves a one-way ticket to the principal's office.


	3. Chapter 3

**Aloha! I am updating from the beautiful state of Hawaii. I didn't have a chance to post this chapter before I left, so here I am, posting this from my hotel room while my mother tries to sleep through Wheel of Fortune.**

**Thank you everyone once again for your awesome reviews. You're all amazing. :D Hope you enjoy this while I finish enjoying my vacation.**

Jade West sat on a bench outside of the principal's office, her face buried in her hands. She wasn't too concerned with the serious trouble she must be in if she'd been sent to the principal, rather than Lane, who usually took care of disciplining students. The question on her mind wasn't "What are my parents gonna do when they find out?" like Tori, who was sitting next to her, but "How can I be in denial if I _know _that I'm in denial?" Her parents weren't a problem. Her dad couldn't be bothered to care about her, and her mom was stuck somewhere between trying to be her best friend and feeling terrified of her.

The real problem was sitting right next to her. Jade had foolishly hoped that if she completely ignored Tori for long enough, she'd just go away, and therefore the weird feeling she got whenever she looked at her would too. When that didn't work, she tried scaring her off – that didn't work either, and had landed her here, in this stuffy room on this stupid bench. Her legs stuck to the warm metal bench and every few seconds she'd lift one leg, then the other, just so she could feel her skin pull away from the bench.

"Do you think w-"

"Don't talk to me." Jade cut her off halfheartedly and sat up straight, just as the door to Principal Eikner's office swung open.

"Jade, Tori." He said, sounding more bored than angry, which was a little bit reassuring. Tori stood up first and quickly followed him into his office, while Jade took her time getting up. She was tired, she hadn't slept in days – weeks – and it took all she had to cross the room and sit down beside Tori once again, in one of the itchy armchairs placed in front of the principal's desk.

"You girls know why you're here, right?" They both nodded. "In this school, I mean. You're here because you're serious about your future. You have a dream and some day you want to make it come true. That's how it is for every student in this school. At Hollywood Arts we take everything very seriously, because in Hollywood, reputation is everything. This school has a good reputation, and I can't have my students ruining that." The two girls nodded once again, and he turned to look at Jade. "That is why I'm giving you detention tomorrow and Friday night after school." Jade nodded – she was much too tired to fight it, and after all, she did kind of deserve it. Not to mention getting detention made her parents mad, and her parents getting mad made her happy. They'd never actually carry out the punishments they said they'd give her, so all it ever did was make them feel as miserable as they made her feel. "And Tori, I'm afraid you'll be getting three days suspension."

"What? _Three days_?" Tori glanced at Jade, shocked, and got a similar look in return. They'd both assumed that he was talking to the two of them when he'd been handing out Jade's punishment.

"One day for each curse word you decided to shout at lunch today." He leaned back in the large leather chair, and added, "On any other day, I would just give you one day, but today the Asphalt Café happened to be full of not only other students, but a group of senior citizens here for a computer class, the heads of two different record companies, and most importantly, the superintendent. I'm sure you understand why I have to punish you so harshly."

Tori looked like she was about to start bawling. She didn't say a single word, and just barely nodded her head as a tear dripped from the corner of her eye and ran down her face. Jade turned in her chair to crack her back, and noticed the superintendent standing right outside in the main office, talking to the secretaries. She immediately knew what to do.

"We understand, Mr. Eikner." Jade said loudly, standing up with her eyes glued to Tori. "I'm sure Tori will get her shit together." Tori's head snapped in her direction and her jaw dropped in disbelief. "Ah, fuck, did I just say that out loud? Damnit! I did it again!"

Principal Eikner looked horrified, as he stared out into the main office and realized his boss had overheard what Jade had just said.

"Well, Jade, I guess you'll be getting three days suspension as well." He stood up and pointed out the door. "You can go home now. I'll see you girls first thing on Tuesday."

As they left the office together, Jade made sure to explain to Tori why she'd done it – or rather, she lied to Tori about why she'd done it.

"Before you say anything, I didn't do it for you. If I'd had to stay late for detention Friday I would miss our camping trip." Tori just gave her a big smile and rolled her eyes.

"I'm so sure."

"It's the truth. I'm _really _excited about this camping trip. I have so many good ghost stories to tell." Jade said, in a slightly sarcastic tone of voice. "And I am so thrilled to finally get to sleep in a termite infested cabin in the middle of fricking nowhere, and get to pee in the woods, and bathe in a filthy lake. It'll just be so much fun."

Tori laughed as she stopped at her locker, both girls having almost forgotten why they were leaving school in the first place.

"Sounds like a good time." Jade heard her say from her own locker, around the corner.

"Yeah, well…" She mumbled, getting frustrated when her combination didn't work for the second time. She yanked on the lock hard enough the third time and it finally opened, so she flung the door open and started digging through the messy contents of her locker.

"…Okay, so I _did_ do it for you, but only because Dickner was being so unfair. Three days is ridiculous. In a public school they'd frown at you and move on." Tori didn't say anything, but Jade kept talking anyway. "You know that if that moron daughter of his or any of her friends had done it, he wouldn't have had a thing to say about it."

"Very true." Tori agreed, rounding the corner with her purse over her shoulder and a textbook held against her chest. Jade shut her locker, spun out her lock, and the two of them walked out to the parking lot, with some sort of unspoken understanding that Tori would give Jade a ride, since Beck usually drove her to school.

"My parents are gonna _kill _me when they find out." Tori said, unlocking the front door.

"Sucks to be you." Jade said, chewing on a hangnail as she pulled the passenger door shut behind her.

"Won't yours be mad?" She asked over the sound of the engine coming to life. Jade only turned and looked at her, wondering if she was serious.

"Right, well…since I'm going to die when I get home, do you want to go get ice cream or something so my last earthly memory can be a decent one?"

"Only if you pay for it." Tori sighed and turned left out of the school parking lot, agreeing without saying a word.

She took her sweet time choosing a flavor of ice cream once they got there, debating between six different ones while Jade stood at the counter, impatiently tapping her toes and holding her own ice cream cone while it dripped onto her fingers, melting faster than she could lick it. Tori ended up going with boring old vanilla, getting her a loud groan from Jade and an annoyed look from the guy behind the counter.

"Can she have a bowl for that? She's gonna get it all over herself."

"Okay, _mom, _if I wanted a bowl I could have asked for one myself." Jade retorted, confusing the guy behind the ice cream counter, who now was just standing there with a Styrofoam bowl in his hand. Tori took it from him and shoved the cup into Jade's hand.

"Take it. Trina's supposed to have the car today and I can't give it back to her all sticky." Jade glared at her, but dumped her cone in the dish anyway, and ripped a plastic spoon out of a jar on the counter near the cash register while Tori paid. Jade was too absorbed in stabbing her ice cream with her spoon to notice when Tori wandered off to find a table, and looked up to see the ice cream guy staring at her.

"What are you looking at?" She snapped, before hurrying to find Tori outside at a table by the door. She sunk into the chair and yawned, before taking a bite of her ice cream. Neither girl said a word, and they ate their ice cream in silence until Jade looked up to see Tori staring at her. She pinched the point of her cone, broke it off, and stuck it in her mouth, shattering the fragile cone between her front teeth.

"Okay, you wanted to talk about it." She said, sticking her spoon in the lump of java ice cream leftover in the Styrofoam dish. "So we'll talk about it." She leaned across the table and whispered, _"I am not a lesbian. _Nothing is ever going to happen between us. Nothing _did _happen. I don't like girls like that. I don't like _you _like that. I like _dick."_ She sat back in her chair, satisfied that she'd made her point, even if it wasn't all true.

"I'm not a lesbian either…" Tori said, caught off guard. "But I'm not the one who kissed another girl."

"Oh, like you didn't kiss me back." Jade hissed. "Face it, Tori. You don't have the drunk excuse. You kissed a girl, and you liked it."

"Don't you bring Katy Perry into this argument!"

"Too late, I already did." Jade smirked and picked up her spoon, taking one last bite. "Well, now that that's settled."

"Yeah, now that _that's _settled, you can find another ride home." Tori stood up, dumped her ice cream in the garbage behind her, and stomped off toward her car.

"Oh come on!" Jade called after her. "Okay, I'm sorry! I know you're a big Katy Perry fan. I shouldn't have brought her into it." Tori just kept walking, so Jade stood up and went after her. "Hey, I just apologized to you! I don't apologize very often, you should appreciate this! Tori Vega! _Come on_!"

"No, _you _come on!" Tori shouted, spinning around to face her. "You either completely ignore it and pretend it's nothing, or you turn it into a big joke!"

"Well then if it's not nothing and it's not a joke, what is it?" Jade shouted back, ignoring all the stares they were getting. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know." Tori paused for a moment, noticing everyone whose attention was now on her. "You're just supposed to deal with it." She added quietly, as she opened her car door.

"And how do you suggest I do that?"

"I don't know." Tori repeated, watching Jade walk around the car. "I'm not giving you a ride." Jade just rolled her eyes and opened the passenger side door. "No, Jade, don't you get in this car. I'm not taking you anywhere. You go get your own ride. Go find a bus, or stick your thumb out on the interstate, or hang on to some station wagon's luggage rack, but you are not getting in this car. Jade, seriously, get out. I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't want you in my car. Jade, come on. Come _on. _Get out. Jade, can't you just…ugh, _fine._"

She sat down in the driver's seat feeling defeated, started the car, backed out of her parking space and got on the interstate without another word.

After she took her exit, Tori turned on the radio, to fill the silence and cover the sound of Jade's voice, should she decide to say anything else. Jade smiled when she saw how Tori nearly died of humiliation upon recognizing the song coming out of the speakers.

_~I kissed a girl, and I liked it. The taste of her cherry chapstick. _

Jade gave Tori a knowing look, freezing her face while she waited for Tori to turn and look.

"At least now you don't have to keep telling people you like Katy for her music!" She shouted over the radio. Tori slammed on the brakes and hit the unlock button.

"Get out."

…

After much struggling, Jade got out of the car and watched as Tori sped away, leaving her on the side of the road. She sighed and looked around, trying to remember which direction her house was in. She realized that her next turn was at least ten minutes away by car, and she started in that direction, wishing she at least had someone here with her to complain to.

A little over ten minutes later Jade felt like she hadn't gotten any closer. She still couldn't see any of the familiar landmarks near her road, and her legs ached like she'd been walking for fifty miles straight. The road was dead. Nobody drove past, and nothing was around to look at, just a flat road and some tall grass.

After a couple more minutes, as some houses came into view, Jade heard the sound of a car behind her. She turned and saw a big white pick-up truck slowing down beside her. The window rolled down, and the bald, extremely overweight man inside called out,

"Hey baby, need a ride?"

"Fuck off!" She shouted back at him. He quickly rolled up his window and drove off, like a scared little puppy. Jade smirked as his truck disappeared from sight, and kept walking, wondering if she'd ever get home or if she'd just die on the side of the road, rotting and getting picked apart by rabid animals until her corpse was picked up by some road kill disposal committee.

Only two minutes had passed before another car came up behind her. She could hear it slowing down and turned, ready to scream at the next guy who thought he'd pick her up like a hooker, but it was a familiar truck this time.

"What are you doing?" Beck asked her, as he leaned over and pushed the passenger side door open.

"Getting in your truck." She quipped, hoisting herself into the passenger seat and shutting the door behind her.

"What happened today?" He questioned, putting the truck in park.

"It's a long story." Jade answered semi-truthfully.

"I have time."

"I'd rather not talk about it." She told him, turning to look into his eyes for the first time in days. He simply shrugged and didn't push it, and she loved that about him. She loved a lot of things about him, but she didn't exactly love _him _anymore. She wanted to – oh how she wanted to – but it just didn't seem to be happening.

"Let's make out." She spit out the words before she knew what she was saying, and crawled over the console, climbing into his lap without him saying a word.

"Uh, okay." He finally replied, as she pressed her lips to his and forged a trail of kisses along his jaw. One of her hands snuck under his shirt and moved over his abs, while the other reached down the side of his seat, pulling the lever and jerking the seat back into a horizontal position. Beck looked up at her, resting his hands on her hips as she pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it into the abandoned passenger seat. She bent back down and moved her mouth up his chest, pulling his shirt away from his body with her teeth, until she reached the collar. Her mouth met his once more, and her hands pulled at his shirt, getting it halfway off before he sat up and yanked it the rest of the way himself. He pulled her against him and his fingers traced her spine while his mouth moved up her neck, stopping at the indent behind her left ear. His teeth touched her earlobe and she groaned when he bit down on it. She didn't open her eyes once, but after a few more minutes of him pulling at random bits of loose skin with his teeth, it stopped feeling good and started feeling weird. His lips were too dry, his skin was too rough. He smelled weird. Something was just off. It wasn't working. She'd wanted it to work so badly, but it didn't. It felt wrong, even if this was right.

He never used to do things like this. He used to be all gentle and by-the-book normal. He'd changed because he knew she liked it this way. She knew how much he loved her – even if he had a funny way of showing it – and it almost broke her heart when she thought about how little she loved him back.

"I should get home." She whispered, pulling his head up so that she could touch her lips to his one more time, just in case.

"What?" He asked, moving back down to her shoulders as if he hadn't been listening.

"I need to get home." She repeated, her voice rough.

"Okay." He said quietly, but he kept nipping at the skin stretched over her collarbone, letting his hands wander until he'd forced three fingers under her bra.

"Beck, stop it. I'm serious. I need to go home." He listened that time, and pulled away from her, raising his hands with a guilty look on his face.

"Okay. Sorry. I was just…okay." He adjusted the seat and pulled his shirt back on, after Jade moved back to the passenger seat and grumpily looked out the window. Beck put the truck in drive and got back on the road. The only sign that anything had just happened at all was the disappointed look on his face that he wore until he pulled his truck into Jade's driveway.

"I'm sorry." Jade apologized for everything he didn't know, and it seemed to appease him. "I know it's been a while…" she whispered, leaning over the console, "and I know you really want to, but I've just been… Well, I've had a lot going on." He put on a fake smile and nodded.

"I understand." But he didn't. He couldn't. He had no way of possibly understanding any of this at all, but his calm, perfect attitude caused a pain in Jade's chest.

"You don't, but it's okay." She said, patting his knee.

"Are you gonna hit me now to make up for being so nice?" He joked, smiling at her. She simply pinched his leg - hard - in response and got out of the truck.

"We're still going Friday, right?"

"Yeah, of course. Don't get into too much trouble, okay?" He requested as he shifted into drive.

"_Bye_." Jade responded coldly, turning to go inside before his truck even moved.

She was greeted by a gust of cold air when she opened the front door, and when she turned around after closing it, there was a small kitten sitting on the floor in front of her. It was completely black except for a thin white ring around its left eye, like a monocle, and its two white front paws. Jade stared at the cat, and it stared at her. Neither of them moved, until Jade's mother walked into the room and the cat turned to look at her.

"There was a guy giving away kittens at the liquor store. I thought he was cute. You like cats, don't you?" She asked her daughter this question apprehensively, as usual. She always spoke to Jade with the words of a best friend and the tone of someone who was afraid she might get punched.

"Yeah, I do." Jade responded, not moving from her spot right inside the front door.

"Do you want to name him? I couldn't decide on a good one, and I figured since you're so creative, I'd let you do it." Again with the subtle compliments. She always snuck them into everyday conversations with her daughter like she thought that it would win her some points, when really, it was just annoying and certainly didn't help her case any.

"I thought dad was allergic."

"Oh, well…it's not like he's ever around." The awkward level in the room jumped twice as high as before. "And I think he grew out of that."

Jade bent down to scoop up the kitten, and it swatted at her hand with its little paws three times before she could grab it. The nameless kitten's tiny claws sunk into her wrist when she held it against her chest and tried to pet it, and Mrs. West gasped loudly.

"I'm sure he's just in the kitten stage right now. He'll calm down when he gets older…"

"No, I like him." Jade smiled down at the kitten, who had stopped struggling and was now licking the side of her index finger with his sandpapery tongue. "He looks like a Victor." She said, before she even had time to realize why that name came to mind.

"Victor. Victor…" Jade's mother turned the word over in her mouth a couple times. "Sounds very…sophisticated." She smiled, accepting the name. "So, uh, did anything happen at school today?" Jade set Victor down and he took off down the hall.

"Yep." Jade answered, purposely withholding an explanation.

"…Like what?" She asked, following her daughter into the kitchen. She watched Jade set her bag on the counter, open the refrigerator and take out an apple before she bothered to answer.

"Got suspended." She said, taking a big bite.

"Why?"

"For saying shit, fuck, and damnit."

"Why would you say that?" The elder West asked, disguising her curiosity as some form of parental responsibility.

"Why wouldn't I?" Jade asked, raising an eyebrow and taking her bag with her when she left the room to join her new kitten in her bedroom.

Jade sat down on her bed and opened her bag, digging through it for her phone. She found it and pulled it out just as Victor jumped on her leg and started climbing up it. She reached down with one hand to grab the cat and set him next to her, and hit the sleep button on her phone to light the screen up with the other.

"…_Did you get home okay?" _A text from Tori, sent ten minutes ago.

_Yes. _Jade texted back, one word and a period, to show that she didn't approve of being left on the side of the road.

"_Sorry I made you walk. You could have been hit by a car or picked up by a serial killer and it would've been my fault."_

_Yes, but I didn't._

"_I'm sorry about everything else too." _Tori responded more slowly with this one. Jade imagined she'd probably read it fifteen different times before hitting send. She was probably hoping to get an apology in return. She was probably wanting this conversation to turn into something else.

_K. _Jade hit send, knowing that this would get to Tori. She didn't get a response for three hours, which told her that it had. During those three hours, a part of her wanted to smile at the fact that Tori was most likely sitting at home, crying over all of this, but another part wanted to make it better, because the fact was, that was exactly what Jade felt like doing right now. She wanted to go take a burning hot shower and stand in there for an hour and cry, because maybe she _did_ like Tori. She still couldn't quite admit to herself that she did, but what she could admit was that she was confused. She didn't have a clue how to sort out what was going on in her mind these days.

Jade sat in her bed for a while, petting Victor and teasing him with a loose thread she'd broke off of her shirt. She laid there until her mother got tired of calling her down for dinner and brought it up to her, and continued to lie there afterward, nearly falling asleep several times. She hated to say it, but the one thing keeping her awake was the anticipation of Tori's response, should she ever get one. She didn't want to care, but she did it anyway.

"_I think my parents were abducted by aliens. They weren't even mad."_

_What'd they say? _Jade pressed the send button and cringed, realizing that it sounded like she had some sort of emotional investment in this conversation.

"_They're proud of me for standing up for myself. Except they said next time I should choose better words or perhaps say them more quietly and in private."_

_So maybe I do like you... I do like you "that way." I just didn't want to admit it. _Jade typed out each word, letter by letter, punching the keys hard with the pads of her thumbs. She stared at the screen for a few seconds, reading the message four times before she deleted it and went to bed without responding.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry about the wait for this one. Kinda lost my motivation after vacation, but it's almost time for the the termination of this story so I decided I should use my imagination…**

**I should have been a rapper. Going to bed might be more helpful though. Enjoy. :)**

Four o'clock came around and Jade still hadn't fallen asleep. It wasn't so much the usual problem of not being able to shut off her brain this time; She was far too tired to tax her mind with even such easy tasks as deciding what to bring on the upcoming camping trip. Her thoughts had finally stopped torturing her, and her mind was completely calm.

It was the churning in her stomach that was ruining things for her this time. What had started as a little bit of nausea had transformed into a full-blown riot in her stomach. She laid in bed in the fetal position, feeling like she was going to throw up, but worried that she'd do it all over the floor if she so much as moved an inch.

Her stomach pains got the best of her and by 4:30 Jade was in the bathroom, stretched out on the cold floor asleep, after clinging to the toilet, dry heaving for fifteen minutes, and eventually giving in to exhaustion, sleeping soundly through the rest of the night on the hard tile floor of the hall bathroom.

The door opened into her foot the next morning, waking her immediately. She looked up at the face in the doorway, squinting from the bright light coming in through the window behind her.

"What are you doing?" Mr. West asked his daughter when he saw her lying on the floor.

"Sleeping."

"In the bathroom?" He questioned, showing little emotion.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I didn't feel good."

"You're not pregnant, are you?" His eyebrows moved together, emphasizing the wrinkles in his forehead.

"No, dad."

"Then why aren't you at school?" He glanced at his watch, making sure he'd read it correctly before.

"I got suspended."

"Oh. Well, as long as you're not pregnant."

"I'm not. You can leave me alone now." She responded nastily, turning her back to him and pretending to go back to sleep so he would leave for work and quit bothering her.

The house was silent for a while. Mrs. West obviously wasn't at home. While she was technically unemployed, she had a full-time job finding ways to get out of the house. Jade had no idea what it was she did all day – she never did come back with anything, so it wasn't shopping, like she'd originally suspected - and honestly she didn't care anymore. Jade didn't exactly see a lot of her parents these days. Once she was old enough to take care of herself, her parents distanced themselves from the house – and Jade – right away. She didn't really mind – she liked being alone - but she did wonder sometimes what it would be like to have real parents. Real parents like what Tori had. A mom who cooked dinner and cleaned the house and didn't pay other people to do it for her. A father who came home from work and sat down at the dinner table with his family and told them all about his day. It'd just be nice, that's all.

"This vicious animal broke into your house." Beck's familiar voice startled her, as he set Victor down beside her. The kitten quickly turned and re-attached itself to Beck though, crawling into his lap once the boy had sat down.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" He just shrugged and picked the cat up again.

"Andre's got a dentist appointment or something. You and Tori are suspended. I'm not going through lunch with only Cat and Robbie to talk to." He looked up from the purring kitten in his lap and smiled. "Figured I'd spend some time with you and go late."

"I'm not gonna be much fun." She responded, punctuating her sentence with a yawn while he just kept petting her kitten, who was absolutely loving the attention.

"It's better than being in class."

"I'm glad I could be your excuse to skip school." She responded, a hint of hostility in her voice as she stood up and took a seat on the edge of the bathtub.

"_What?_" He seemed surprised by her reply, but didn't stop what he was doing or even so much as look up at her. "When did you get him?" He asked a moment later, still running his hand down the tiny cat's back.

"Mom brought him home yesterday. She got him at the liquor store." He just nodded, as if that were completely normal. "His name's Victor." She added.

"Ahhh…" He hummed, picking Victor up and holding him at a distance. "He does look like a Victor."

"Which is why I named him that." Jade muttered under her breath. She watched Beck play with Victor like he was a little baby and not a tiny fur ball who still needed to learn to use the litter box. Beck kept petting the cat, and Victor kept purring. He didn't once swipe at Beck's hand with his claws, like he had each time Jade had tried to pick him up so far. After the whole night before of Jade-Victor 'bonding,' the stupid cat still liked a stranger better.

"Would you stop doing that?" She finally snapped, with her eyes on Beck's hands.

"Stop doing what?" He asked coolly, as if he hadn't done a thing and she wasn't upset.

"Stop petting my cat!"

"Jade, it's just a kitten. What's the big deal?"

"You've been here for ten minutes and you've been cuddling with a stupid cat the whole time. You've barely even looked at me."

"Sorry." He replied, obviously annoyed. "I didn't think you wanted me to look at you."

"What's that supposed to mean? What did I do that made you think that?"

"Well you've been a total bitch all week. Worse than usual, at least." He didn't keep eye contact as he said this, but didn't seem too worried about her reaction.

"Do you _want_ to get slapped?"

"Look, Jade, you're not a very nice person. Honestly, I like that about you, but sometimes I really wish that you could just be nice, for once. To me, at least."

"If you want a nice girlfriend you should just go get one." She responded, the sound of her voice much less hostile than you'd expect the tone accompanying the words she'd just said to be.

"I just want the one I had last week." He answered after a few seconds. Jade just stared at him, rather than saying anything. She liked Beck, she really did. He was an amazing boyfriend and he put up with a lot, but he just didn't seem to be what she really wanted anymore. He didn't show it the way that most people did, but she knew that he loved her, and she desperately wanted to return the favor. It was just that she couldn't, really. Not anymore.

Something in the back of her mind told her that this relationship wouldn't make it through the weekend, and that same something tried to stop her when she decided she'd make it up to him ahead of time.

"She'll be waiting for you in her bedroom." Jade finally said aloud.

…

It was hot in Jade's room, and she was burning up, but still she untangled one of her blankets and pulled it up to her neck. She just wanted to hide under it and disappear forever. She felt sick again and rolled onto her side, curling into a ball and hoping that maybe this was just a sign that death was around the corner and she was about to be put out of her misery.

Beck's hand brushed her bare skin, gently moving over her hip bone beneath the blanket, and he sleepily settled into the space behind her. She wanted to tell him that he should go, but the part of her that actually was a nice person wasn't ready to break his heart quite yet, and that part had control, because the rest of her was consumed with hatred for everything else in her life. She hated more than anything that she couldn't just feel the way she had always felt. That was all she really wanted. Jade hated that her life was getting so screwed up all because of some stupid feelings. Most of all, she hated _Tori_ for making it so hard to really, truly hate her anymore.

After a while, Jade got out of bed, not caring whether she disturbed Beck – who was now fast asleep – or not, and pulled open the top drawer of her dresser. She grabbed some clothes, not bothering to see if they matched, and went to the bathroom to take a shower. When she got dressed and returned to her bedroom twenty minutes later she was relieved to see that Beck had left, and sitting in his vacated spot on the bed was Victor, judging her as if he were even capable of knowing the whole story.

…

Jade spent all of Friday morning doing absolutely nothing. She still planned on going camping – she hated people who bailed on you at the last minute, so she couldn't very well do that herself – but she really didn't feel like preparing anything, so she just didn't pack.

It was 2 o'clock before Jade got off of the couch, and she later regretted not getting ready sooner when she showed up at the school parking lot ten minutes late and everybody looked at her like she was such a burden and had completely ruined their lives by making them wait ten whole minutes.

Jade wasn't sure which moron's stupid idea it was to pack them all into Beck's truck, but it certainly wasn't working. Beck, Jade, Cat, and Tori were stuffed into the front, in that order, since the girls took up less room and three of them could fit into two seats, and Robbie and Andre were in the back, in the tiny seats that folded down and were meant for children.

Jade turned her attention to Beck so that she wouldn't have to look at Tori or listen to Cat's ceaseless chattering the whole way, and barely ten minutes out of the parking lot, she noticed his face getting progressively redder, due to the complaining everyone was doing. She highly doubted that he'd actually say anything, but she could tell he was getting fed up.

"Can't you move the seat up?"

"My knees are already touching the dashboard. The seat won't go up any further."

"This seatbelt is too tight."

"Then loosen it!"

"I tried!"

"Would you all just shut up?" Jade finally shouted over the sound of the others arguing.

"There's not enough room in this truck!" Robbie complained.

"I know how we can make room. Let's tie Jade to the roof." Rex suggested happily. Robbie looked shocked by his outburst, but it was nothing compared to the look on his face when Jade ripped Rex out of his hands and threw him out the open window.

Jade wasn't quite as happy with herself when, after they turned around and went back for Rex, everyone voted to make her sit in the bed of the truck for the rest of the way to the campground.

Beck hadn't defended her at all. All he'd said was "Sorry babe," before everyone ganged up on her and forced her into the bed of the truck, strapping her down with some bungee cords like a piece of furniture. She found a little comfort knowing that she had put up a little fight. It gave Jade a small sense of satisfaction, knowing that her foot had connected with Tori's eye, and that she'd managed to elbow Robbie in the stomach. Still, she was beyond pissed. As the truck moved down the highway, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, knowing that they could hear her since the windows were down.

"THIS IS ILLEGAL! I'M SUING THE PANTS OFF OF EACH ONE OF YOU THE SECOND I GET OUT OF HERE! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO PRISON, I SWEAR TO GOD! YOU ARE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!"

After a few minutes of that, her throat started to hurt, so she stayed quiet, but she was still fuming, foaming at the mouth in the bed of Beck's truck. Her face felt so hot you could fry an egg on it, and she fully intended on hurting Beck for allowing this to happen to her.

A couple minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store, and Beck immediately hopped into the bed of the truck with her – no doubt to shut her up before she could attract attention – while Cat and Tori went inside.

"I'm _really _sorry babe." He said, making sure not to come close to her legs, which were untied and very much capable of causing harm.

"Don't call me that." Jade responded angrily as she continued to try to free herself. For a couple stretchy cables, she sure was tied down really tight.

"Jade, you threw Rex out the window of a moving vehicle."

"So? He's just a doll. It's not like he felt it."

"He's not just a doll to Robbie." Beck's calm voice was seriously getting on her nerves.

"Yeah, and Robbie belongs in a mental hospital."

"Jade…" He didn't finish his sentence, and just sat down beside her while she continued to work at the cords binding her.

"Are these really necessary?" She asked, after some more struggling.

"When you calm down I'll let you go." Beck replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"As long as I'm tied up in the back of your stupid truck, I'm not going to calm down." She hissed, and then looked away.

"All I know is you better run when I get out of here." He sighed loudly, and hopped out of the truck just as Tori and Cat came out of the store, with Tori holding a bag of frozen peas to her eye. She looked at Jade with her one eye as she climbed into the truck, but didn't look upset at all, which was extremely annoying.

Jade did her best to stay quiet for the rest of the ride to the campground, reminding herself that if she pretended to be calm she'd be let out much sooner, and could then beat the shit out of Beck for not untying her earlier.

Ten minutes later, Jade decided that it wasn't worth hurting anyone over. She'd already punished Tori and Robbie and felt more like throwing up the second she got out of the truck, rather than harming Andre. Beck would get what was coming to him eventually, so for the time being she was just going to enjoy their little vacation, or at least pretend to. It seemed more and more likely that she was going to have to pretend, after Beck turned off the main road and started driving down a bumpy gravel road.

The road curved along the shore of a lake and went into some trees. The gravel thinned and eventually the road became a wide dirt path, complete with several holes, rocks, mud puddles, and anything else imaginable that could make this ride uncomfortable.

The trees fell back and exposed the other side of the lake, with its shore littered with little – and rundown - cabins. Beck stopped the truck in front of one of the better-looking ones, but it still wasn't much to look at.

Everyone climbed out of the truck and reached into the bed for their things, making sure to avoid Jade, who sat patiently waiting for Beck to untie her. He eventually came around to the back of the truck, climbed in, and unhooked the bungee cords so that she could untangle herself and get out. Beck waited by the tailgate while everyone else – with the exception of Robbie, who had run away the second he got out of the truck - watched, and held a hand out for Jade to take as she jumped down, only for her to ram her knee into his groin seconds later.

Beck doubled over in pain, and his voice came out much higher when he was finally able to speak.

"What the hell?"

"You deserved that." She responded bluntly.

Jade moved toward the door of the cabin, passing Andre, who patted Beck on the shoulder sympathetically, and Tori, who hesitantly relinquished her bag of frozen peas.

"Here. You need these more than I do." She told him, before she followed Jade into the cabin, with Cat right at her heels.

"Jade, don't get mad at me for saying this, but I don't think you're a very good girlfriend." Cat said from a distance.

"I think you seriously hurt him." Tori added timidly.

"So. He tied me up and left me in the back of his truck."

"He didn't actually-"

"He didn't stop it so he might as well have! What is wrong with this cabin? This is _not_ a cabin." Beck and Andre finally entered the little shack, looking much better. "Beck, this is a shed." Jade said to him unhappily. "This isn't even a shed. This is a giant box made of wood."

"Well, it's not in the state it once was, but I wouldn't say it's _that _bad… All we're doing in here is sleeping anyway." The second he mentioned sleeping, Tori groaned loudly.

"What?" Andre asked when nobody else said anything.

"I forgot my sleeping bag at home."

"Sucks for you." Jade remarked. "Where's my stuff?"

"You can use mine." Beck offered, stopping Jade in her tracks.

"Uh, I hope you don't think I'm sharing mine with you then."

"I'll just sleep on the floor without one then, if that makes everyone happy." Beck responded, annoyed.

"I have a blanket, I can just use that." Tori offered, embarrassed.

"No, you have a black eye, you can have a sleeping bag."

"Well you have…well…you deserve one too." She responded awkwardly, as everyone else started moving around the cabin, grabbing their bags and setting everything out.

It was eventually decided that Tori would get Beck's sleeping bag, Jade would unzip hers and lay it out flat, and she and Beck would share it, using Tori's blanket to cover themselves. Jade wasn't happy about this but everyone made sure to remind her that it was the least she could do, having given Tori the black eye that apparently made her sleeping bag-worthy, and having also lowered Beck's chances of ever having children.

Everybody decided that they wanted to start a fire, and Beck informed them that they would first need to go gather the firewood themselves, so they all left the cabin unenthusiastically, except for Jade, who chose to stay behind.

Once she had the place to herself, Jade unzipped the backpack she'd brought with her and dug through it, not looking for anything in particular. She took out a jacket, but didn't put it on, grabbed her pillow from the ground next to her bag, sat down, and started crying into it, unaware that Tori had gotten bored of firewood-hunting already and was watching her from the doorway as she sobbed into the fluffy pillow for twenty different reasons.


	5. Chapter 5

Around the campfire later that night, everyone was unusually quiet. Tori hadn't mentioned what she'd seen, but it was almost as if everyone already knew how upset Jade was. They were being careful around her, and nobody seemed to be mad anymore about what had happened earlier. Not even Beck was angry. He was just being Beck, acting like nothing had happened even when nobody expected him to. It seemed that he'd already forgiven Jade for kneeing him in the balls, which Tori thought was pretty amazing. She would never know what that actually felt like, but she did know that it hurt a lot, and for him to have forgiven her so easily – and to look past all the things like that she'd done before - he must really love her.

That thought brought back the memory she'd been trying to keep out of her head all week. Sitting in her lawn chair next to the fire, Tori watched Beck and Jade quietly interacting, and Jade's voice replayed in her head.

"_Idon'tthinkIloveBeckanymore." _Tori hadn't really thought about what had been said that night, so it wasn't until this moment, looking back, that she realized that _she_ was the reason why Jade had said that. Tori had been the one to make Jade question both her relationship with Beck and her sexuality, and that realization suddenly made Jade's anger seem completely reasonable. Tori hadn't liked the idea at all, but try as she may, she couldn't deny that she'd felt something when Jade had kissed her, and so she had finally come to terms with it and partially moved on with her life – something Jade hadn't quite done yet.

Despite the feelings Tori had realized she had for Jade, watching the girl look at her boyfriend in such a sad, defeated way nearly broke her heart. Beck and Jade had been together for so long, it would just be weird if someday they weren't. If they broke up, everything would change. Everything would be _awkward_.

Eventually Beck grew tired of Jade ignoring half of everything he said, so he turned to Andre, who was sitting at his left, and started a conversation with him, Cat, and Robbie.

Tori watched Jade, who just stared into the fire and didn't make a sound. The fact that she hadn't threatened to hurt anyone with the weapon right in front of her proved just how upset she was.

"Jade." Tori whispered, leaning toward the other girl.

"What?" Jade asked calmly, not moving a muscle.

"I uh…I'm sorry if you're uncomfortable with me being here. I know I've messed things up for you."

"No, _I _messed things up for me. You did help though." Jade responded quietly. "And I umm…sorry about the black eye."

"It's okay. You didn't mean to kick me in the face." She paused for a second, and then quickly added, "…did you?"

"No, that wasn't intentional. Serves you right though." She finally looked away from the fire and made eye contact with Tori, even though it only lasted a couple of seconds before she looked away again.

"That was stupid. We shouldn't have done that." Tori said sympathetically.

"Tori," Jade said, looking directly into Tori's eyes once more. "could you just…stop talking to me? I really can't handle this right now."

"Uhhh, yeah. Sorry. I totally understand." She barely got the words out before Jade stood up and went inside the cabin without anyone else noticing.

…

The group's first night sleeping at the camp was uncomfortable, to say the least. Everyone woke up extremely early – the light reflecting off the surface of the lake lit up the inside of the cabin right away – and the complaining started there. The floor was too hard, it got too cold, they were hungry, they were bored. Beck looked like he wanted to kill himself before the clock had even struck 9 AM, and Tori seemed to be the only one who empathized with him at all, even if guilt was the main reason she was on his side.

"Hey, guys, let's just forget about all our complaints and do something fun, okay?" She said loudly over the sound of everyone else's voices.

"Like what?" Andre asked her, getting a blank stare in return. She hadn't thought it out that far.

"Umm…we could…"

"I know what we could do!" Cat said excitedly. "We could-"

"No." The rest of the group cut her off, and she frowned, looking deeply offended for only a split second.

"It was just a suggestion." She muttered.

"Well, there's the lake…" Tori mumbled. "Is it safe to swim in?" She asked Beck, who appeared to have calmed down quite a bit since everyone had quit complaining.

"Yeah, we could do that." He nodded enthusiastically, and everyone else seemed to agree that this wasn't a bad idea, so they changed into their bathing suits and hit the beach.

Clouds rolled in within minutes of everyone getting in the water, but Tori didn't let that stop her from enjoying the game of Marco Polo she was playing with Andre, Cat, and Robbie. Cat and Robbie were getting more and more agitated each time they lost, but Tori and Andre were having a blast.

Beck and Jade hadn't even made it into the water before they started fighting, and Tori found herself glancing over at the shore every few minutes for the entire half hour before Cat and Robbie quit playing Marco Polo and the game ended.

"What do you think they're fighting about?" Andre asked Tori as they both watched the argument taking place a few dozen feet away on the shore.

"No idea."

"Jade's been a lot worse than usual lately." He commented, dipping under the water for a second and popping back up before Tori had a chance to say anything.

"She's got a lot on her mind."

"What, did she tell you that?" Andre questioned, a slight hint of laughter in his voice. "Did you two have a _heart to heart_?" He laughed loudly at the thought, and didn't notice the look on Tori's face.

_Less heart to heart, more lips to lips, _she thought to herself, just as Jade looked out onto the water and caught them staring.

"She caught us."

"She totally saw us watching." Tori agreed, crouching so that the water came up to her nose.

"She's gonna be mad… Oh crap she's coming this way. Can Jade swim? I hope she can't swim. Stop right there Jade. Don't get in the water… Oh man she got in the water. She's in the water." Andre narrated what Tori was watching from beside him, and they were both relieved when Jade stopped a few feet out from the sand to talk to Cat, who was sitting in the water looking for interesting rocks

"Act cool. Maybe she didn't actually see us." Tori said, anxiously wringing her hands as she turned her back to Jade a moment later.

"Nah, Tori, she saw you. She's coming this way now and I don't think it's to talk to me." Andre told her, looking relieved. "See ya!" He swam away as Jade got closer.

"Please don't tell me you just broke up with Beck." Tori said when Jade stopped in front of her. Her reason for asking this wasn't so much that she wanted them to stay together forever. It was just that if Beck and Jade had just broken up again, the rest of the camping trip wasn't going to be fun for anybody.

Jade didn't say a word, and just looked down.

"You did." Tori mumbled. "Umm…where's he going?" She asked once she looked over by the cabin and noticed Beck getting into his truck.

"To get me some coffee." Jade answered simply.

"…You just dumped him…and you're making him go get you coffee…"

"He knows he'll learn the meaning of a nasty breakup if I don't get some caffeine soon." Tori nodded in agreement and was about to ask Jade why she'd come to her when Andre returned.

"Hey…Beck's coming _back_, right? He's not leaving us here is he? 'Cause I'm not staying in that cabin for the rest of my life."

"He's on a coffee run." Tori answered.

"Well why didn't he take me with him? I'm sick of this campground. And Robbie's being really weird." They all looked over to where Robbie was belly-flopping into the shallow water right next to Cat, who kept squealing every time he splashed her.

"Umm, he kind of wants to be alone, I think." Tori said slowly, responding to Andre's question while she watched Cat and Robbie playing in the water like six year olds.

"Yeah." Jade replied quickly. "Anyway, since he's gone I'm kind of in charge now, and I just came over here to tell you guys we're gonna prepare for that horror unit tonight at sundown." She smiled a truly creepy smile at both Tori and Andre, which only disappeared when Cat suddenly cried out.

"Jade come help me! I cut my finger on a rock!"

"What do you want me to do about it?" Jade yelled back at her, over her shoulder.

"I don't know, just make it better!" Jade sighed, muttered "I swear sometimes it's like I'm her mother," and left to go pacify Cat.

"…So Jade's in charge of the horror thing…" Andre said a moment later. "Should we be scared?"

"Terrified."

…

An hour later, Beck still wasn't back, and Jade was getting crankier by the minute. After helping Cat with her cut, hardly ten minutes had gone by before Jade went off on her for complaining about getting sand in it. Robbie – with Rex in tow - had run off after one simple look from her, and Tori and Andre knew enough to stay back and say nothing.

"I'm done. This water is gross and you people are boring." Jade complained to anybody who would listen.

"Yeah, I'm getting kind of cold anyway…" Tori muttered, looking up into the cloud-filled sky. "I think there's a couple showers in the bathroom that we could use to clean up. You coming, Cat?" She looked over at the redhead, who was sitting in the sand several feet away, still pouting over her injured finger and the way that Jade had treated her.

"Not if Jade's gonna yell at me again."

"I won't yell at you." Jade promised, and nobody really believed her, but the three girls still went to use the showers together anyway, stopping by the cabin first to get some soap and shampoo.

"This is disgusting." Jade commented, draping her beach towel over the half wall that divided the showers from the bathroom stalls. "There aren't even shower curtains. What if I wanted to do this naked?" She didn't get an answer from Cat or Tori, and just grumpily turned the knob, jumping back when the water shot out of the showerhead with a lot more pressure than she'd expected.

Cat was second to brave the disgusting shower room, and she took the one next to Jade, leaving the most revolting corner shower for Tori. The knob was partially broken off of this one, so Tori struggled with turning what was left of it far enough to get any water pressure at all. It took forever for the water to heat up to a bearable temperature, so by the time Tori stepped under the stream of water, Jade and Cat were already rinsing the shampoo out of their hair.

Cat passed Tori the bottle of shampoo once she'd gotten the soap out of her eyes and took the body wash from Jade. Tori struggled getting the cap off of the bottle, and caught herself watching Jade as she rinsed the last of the bubbles off and started messing with her bikini top, which was slowly coming untied. Tori couldn't force her eyes closed no matter how hard she tried, and Jade caught her staring just as she reached behind her and grabbed the almost completely untied knot.

"What are you looking at?" She hissed as she retied it.

"Nothing." Tori squeaked, earning her a curious look from Cat.

"Listen Tori," Jade said, turning off the water and storming over to her. "I know you've got some kind of thing for me but you need to keep it to yourself." She snarled these words in Tori's face at a volume low enough that Cat couldn't hear her. "I don't like you that way and I don't like you _looking at me _that way." Her voice softened with this lie, but she still looked rather intimidating, so all Tori could do was nod. "Got it?" She asked her, receiving another nod. "Good." With that, Jade turned her back to Tori, grabbed her towel, and left, leaving the other two alone.

"What was that?" Cat asked casually as she finished her own shower.

"N-nothing." Tori croaked, still surprised by Jade's reaction.

"She's just upset because Beck's not back with her coffee." Cat explained obliviously. "I don't know if you've noticed, but Jade's extremely addicted to caffeine. She tried to give it up once and Beck almost died."

"…Really?"

"Well, she broke his arm. Or was it his ankle?" Cat wondered aloud as she patted her hair with her towel. "Well, she broke something. He wasn't very happy."

"Can't blame him…" Tori mumbled in response, closing her eyes as shampoo started to run down her face.

"Do you still need the soap?" Cat asked her a moment later.

"You can take the shampoo." The taller girl answered, trying to keep the soap running down her face from getting in her mouth.

"Okay!" Cat chirped happily before she ran off too, leaving Tori alone to finish her shower in peace.

…

The sun was started to come down when Beck finally came back. Everybody had started getting worried that he wasn't going to return hours before, so when he finally did, with a cup of coffee for Jade and no explanation for why he'd been gone so long, everybody let out a sigh of relief, but didn't ask him what he'd been doing all those hours.

The noise level picked back up once they started getting the fire ready for their late dinner, and things had almost gone back to a relatively normal state by the time the slowest eater (which was Cat, since she couldn't shut up long enough to actually eat) had finished.

"So I came up with a plan for tonight." Jade said out of nowhere, after spending several minutes staring into space and paying no attention to the conversation going on around her. "We were all gonna come up with scary stories and tell them around the campfire. That was the plan, right?" Everyone nodded. "Well seeing as that's extremely lame, I was thinking we would do that…only we'll all go out into the forest once it's dark, and we will split up and each one of us will go off by ourselves. No flashlights. Cell phones in our pockets. Nothing to distract us, because we'll be using this time to come up with our horror stories." Everyone just stared back at her, not sure what to think of this plan. "Trust me, you'll come up with a good one out there all alone in the forest…in the dark… with the owls…and the wind…and the creepy sounds…"

"…That sounds scary." Cat finally complained, breaking the silence that had smothered them once Jade had started speaking.

"That's the point."

"Well…" Beck was next to speak, looking directly at Jade before his eyes drifted to Tori, and then flashed across the rest of the group. "That's basically why we all came out here, isn't it? Sounds like a good idea to me."

"Yeah, if we can't come up with a good scary story out there, then we're doomed when we get back to school. I think it's a good idea." Tori agreed, with a hint of nervousness in her voice.

"Of course you do." Jade replied bluntly.

"What, I'm not allowed to think you have good ideas?" Tori shot back, knowing fully well why she'd received a reaction like that.

"The sun's almost down, so we should all get ready." Jade changed the subject, looking away in such a painfully obvious way that everyone else noticed, which brought back the uncomfortable feeling they'd only just gotten rid of.

"Right. Let's get going." Beck stood up and went back to the cabin first, urging the others to follow his lead, which left only Jade and Tori around the remains of the dying campfire. Both of Jade's hands came down hard on the armrests of her lawn chair, making a loud clapping sound, and Tori swore she could hear a vertebrae in Jade's neck snap when she turned her head to shoot Tori one of the evilest looks she'd ever seen on a human face before she too went back to the cabin.

It took fifteen minutes to convince Cat that she wouldn't be killed by a wild animal if she went off by herself for an hour, and everybody was feeling the stress of this weekend camping-trip-gone-wrong by the time they all split up and started walking off into the woods.

There were dirt paths worn into the ground from all the hikers that used to frequent the campground in its better days, or else Tori would not have agreed to wandering around in the woods by herself at night. She was still a little nervous that she would get lost, so she tried to make out any kind of landmark she could see, which wasn't much, considering the moon was the only light source and it was partially covered by clouds. She pulled out her phone and made a mental note of the time, reminding herself that she had just one hour to come up with a horror story.

First things first, she needed a setting. Obviously not a forest.

The mall. A small town mall at night. Nobody around but one lazy security guard, a few unlucky shoppers who got locked in, and a vicious murderer… No, that was a stupid idea.

A hospital! A woman wakes up in the hospital only to find that everyone else is a zombie, and – no, that wouldn't work either.

Tori went through countless other settings – an abandoned warehouse, a runaway train, a ski resort, a theme park – and was having a lot more trouble than she'd expected. She decided to settle on a penthouse apartment in the heart of Chicago, but her thoughts were interrupted by the crack of a twig behind her. She spun around in the pitch black and didn't see a thing, which made her wonder why she'd expected to at all.

"Hello?" She called, mentally kicking herself after the word came out of her mouth. What did she expect to get in response? _"Oh hey it's just me, the friendly campground slasher here to cut you into pieces. No worries." _She might as well already be in a horror movie. She fit the role of Stupid Girl Who Is First To Die really well.

Back to her story idea. She needed an antagonist. A woman. The antagonist in these kind of stories was almost always a man, so she'd go with the opposite. Now this woman needed a story. Escaped mental patient? Raised by wolves?

Another loud sound interrupted her thoughts, this time coming from ahead of her. This time she just swallowed hard and started walking faster.

Back to the antagonist. A figment of the protagonist's own imagination, perhaps? A crazy killer neighbor lady who was actually just her brain's projection of her own abusive mother…

"_Tori._" Tori nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her name. Had she imagined it? She must have. It was probably just the wind.

"_Tori Vega." _Alright, that was definitely her imagination. She was listening for her name now, so obviously she'd thought that she'd heard it.

"_Victooooriaaaa." _She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, even though she wasn't supposed to use it, and tried to shine a light around the path. She saw nothing, and the voice had stopped, but she still couldn't move. This was definitely the perfect setting to think of scary things, she decided.

"It's just my imagination." Tori said out loud. "Of course I'm hearing voices. I'm expecting to hear a voice. It's just the wind. I'm not crazy." She sighed in relief. "Except I'm talking to myself, so maybe I am…" She shook her head and turned around, just in time to see a dark figure jump down from the tree above her, landing only inches away from her on the ground. Tori's heart nearly stopped, and she tripped over a branch as she scrambled away from whatever had just fallen from the tree, causing her to collapse into a bush. The figure on the ground slowly stood up and moved forward into a small beam of moonlight that illuminated Jade's face.

"_Shit._ Jade, you almost gave me a heart attack!" Tori squeaked in shock. Jade held out her hand, and Tori took it, only to find out right away that Jade didn't plan on letting go. She pulled Tori up and got in her face, squeezing her wrist so hard it would probably leave a bruise.

"Are you _happy?" _Her voice went up at the end of her question, just as the clouds above cleared, lighting the woods up just enough to show the hysteria shining in Jade's eyes.

"I-What?"

"Does it make you happy – Does it _thrill you_… knowing you've ruined my life?"

"Jade, I didn't-"

"YES YOU DID!" She screeched, letting go of Tori so suddenly that the smaller girl nearly lost her balance and fell again. "You did! You ruined _everything! _Everything is _different _because of _you_!" She ran her fingers through her hair, and spun around. "It's not supposed to be like this."

"Jade, you can't control how you feel any more than I can."

"It's not how _I _feel. _It's you. _It's_ all you_. You just… I don't have feelings like that. I swear I don't. Sometimes I think that I do, but I-but I'm just…I'm wrong, because I don't. I _don't._"

"You're just making yourself miserable, you know that?" Tori's voice sounded a thousand times calmer than she felt, but she knew that if she sounded nervous, Jade would never relax. "If you keep denying it, you're just going to have to keep doing that. You're never going to be happy."

"I'm not _miserable_, I'm just… I'm crazy. I'm going crazy, and _you _made me this way."

"I didn't make you kiss me."

"Would you just _stop? _It was just a stupid kiss!" She shrieked, and while Tori couldn't see Jade's face very well anymore, she knew from the sound of the girl's voice that she was crying. "It didn't mean _anything! _It was stupid and it was just…it was just a heat of the moment kind of thing, like…like this!"

Tori's heart jumped for the thousandth time that night when Jade grabbed her and pulled her into an unexpected kiss for the second time. The tears on Jade's cheeks rubbed off onto Tori's, and her hands involuntarily moved up to rub them off, only instead of doing that, her fingers found their way to the back of Jade's neck, as if they could pull her any closer than she already was. This time it lasted quite a bit longer, but when they separated Jade had the same horrified look on her face as she had after the first kiss. This expression slowly faded though, as she took a step back. She started pulling on a strand of her hair, looking at anything but Tori as she mumbled something hardly comprehensible.

"See, it was just…It was just…" Her eyes met Tori's once more, just as the other girl reached out and grabbed Jade's arm, pulling her back into a kiss ten times as passionate as the other two combined. Everything Jade had said before this had suggested that she would resist, but she didn't. This time she fell into the kiss as if it had been done a thousand times before.

"Does this feel like a _heat of the moment kind of thing _to you?" Tori whispered into her ear before immediately moving her mouth back to Jade's.

"No it doesn't." Jade breathed in response as the two of them stumbled backward off the path.

Tori had planned on wandering around in this spooky forest for an hour, telling the others her story when she returned, and sleeping until they could all get the hell out of there, but she'd obviously veered far off course, as she was now falling to the ground in the middle of some bushes with her mouth attached to a girl who'd poured coffee on her the first time they'd met. Tori could now forgive every single insult, injury, and inconvenience this girl had caused, because Jade had finally quit fighting.

_**Hey I just finished something. :o Seriously though I haven't finished a story in so long, so even though this one was super short, I'm proud of myself right now. :D Thank you thank you thank you for sticking with me until the end. I love you all for that. Let me know what you thought. Or not. I'm not gonna force you if you don't want to. That'd be hypocritical, because I'm super lazy that way as well. :p **_


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